pointed up, twisting under thick spruce and between birches. Breaking twigs was not Anni’s ecological style. Breathing heavily, but warming as she went, Belle ducked under larger branches and bent stubborn alders, which snapped back in her face. Her heavy mitts were becoming oppressive, so she stuffed them into her pockets, welcoming the cooling evaporation on her hands.
The farther she climbed, the more her admiration for the old woman grew. Surely she must be pushing 70. How many hours and days and years had she devoted to these highways? They were so fresh and numerous that the old woman must come out every day, one foot rounding the other in the hip-swinging snowshoe dance. Belle’s heart was racing as she paused, and Freya dug her nose into a bush, sneezing at the powdery snow. Here the dogs had angled off to smell up a squirrel, to scare a few feathers off a fleet partridge, or to lay masculine claim to a familiar gummy pine.
An hour later, twining around the mountain, she emerged at the top, a balding outlook which presented the lake like a sparkling Christmas platter. Many miles out, a few toy figures on sleds scooted across, and a truck had heavy going pulling a large hut over the softening ice. The day had warmed at last. Taking large gulps of air into her lungs, which no longer pricked her nostrils or choked her, she gave a loud hallooo. Freya barked, and down at the lakeside, hidden by trees, Anni’s dogs answered, the deep lab duelling with the bugling beagle. Remembering the jerky, Belle fingered out a piece and presented it to Freya, tasting a chunk herself. Peppery and tender, it bore little relation to the prohibitively expensive store-bought cardboard. Then with an eye to this new kingdom, she noticed striations of moose antler marks on the smaller maples where the tormented creatures often rubbed the velvet to soothe their pain. In the summer, red froth pinked the papery white birches six feet up. Touching her stinging temple where an alder had switched her face, she wiped her own fresh blood and joined it to the birch. Name it, name it Moose Mountain, something told her.
Why not make some trails of her own? Belle knew every mushroom, lichen and birch gall on the paths nearest her house, the trails that Ed and his son-in-law tamped with their snow machines in winter and their quads in summer. With the clear vista through the woods and the security of a snowshoe track, she could link the trails by a key blaze or landmark, then follow before spring rains wakened the bugs and unfurled the concealing leaves. For the first time since the Great Freeze, she felt connected to the world, clicking on all cylinders. Best of all, she had forgotten for a moment that Jim Burian lay frozen in a quiet crypt waiting for a grave under blossoms he would never touch.
Fresh paths for the brain, she thought, breathing evenly and slowly. Explore the magic trinity of criminology unchanged since the death of Abel: motive, opportunity, means. Backward, work backward, oh time in thy flight. Means in the bush equalled a snowmobile, and if she guessed right, a second machine with reverse. It must have been very difficult and time-consuming to back up that far without a slip. Opportunity? Brooks, of course, originally the number one suspect, but no more. Cott Lake must have been a set-up. Why would Brooks lie about a particular lake after admitting the transfers? And speaking of opportunity, there was the nagging question of where Jim had eaten that fish and vegetables Monroe had found stuck in his teeth. If that had been his last meal at his cabin, there was no trace of it there, only the noodle packet. On his way home, he hadn’t eaten dinner in the middle of nowhere.
Finally, motive. There the problem stuck as it had from the beginning, fast-closed into the ice. Jim Burian had done no apparent wrong, had made no apparent enemies, but “apparent” was a word with deceptive nuances. As for that, pursue another tautology: greed, love and revenge. Greed for gold, the luminous drop, the scam that Tom had described. Another Lost Deutchman Mine? Old Bonanza?
Then love, the lingering romantic, a love so quiet it was never admitted. Eva had been at Shield at the same time as Jim. Was she the girl he’d discussed with the chaplain? What had happened between them to cause her breakdown? Jim was incapable of harming anyone.
Behind love, the invisible grumbler in the dark. Revenge. But how could revenge enter into this scenario? The puzzle had assumed the convolutions of a pile of pick-up sticks. There was one last place where she might find enlightenment.
Belle steamed home, challenging the dog to keep up, and gathered her snowmobile gear. It had been an unusual violation of bush courtesy for Franz not to have invited her to his camp that day at Cott, when they were practically on the doorstep. Yet he was always so polite and proper. What was it he hadn’t wanted her to see? Her microwave clock read eleven, and he had mentioned long lab periods on Wednesdays.
In spite of a minefield of wet spots and water channeling at the shore, Wapiti was safe enough. The ice was still a foot thick. The smaller lakes would be another story, especially as the sun warmed, so she would opt for the slower trail route to Cott instead of the fast trip through five lakes. Belle hauled two-by-eights from her scrap pile to bridge the crack at the shore and eased the Bravo onto the ice. A larger machine would have powered across without supports.
The ride across Wapiti took longer this time, since Belle detoured around several acres of slush fields at the half-way point. One machine, buried up to the seat, had given its owner a long walk home. At the top of the Dunes, she stopped and glanced over at the island. No Jimmy, just as she had hoped. As she drove, she planned every step. A quick turnaround after a search of the cabin and maybe a stop with the Burians at Mamaguchi. Her spirits sank as she passed the turn to see no smoke from the lodge and no fresh tracks. Just in case something went wrong, a friend at that relay point would have been a bonus.
On the slow and winding hills of the overland route, Belle saw very little outside her mind’s theatre, as she concentrated on the task ahead. Finally, she located the last turn to the camp. From the condition of the trail, it had been perhaps a week since Franz had visited. Belle made a tour around the outbuildings. Between a toolshed and a small sauna rose an oddly shaped mound of snow. Strange woodpile. She swept off the tarp and lifted a corner to reveal a pile of mottled rocks. After being washed off in the snow, the piece she chose was heavy with gold streaks.
Wasting no time, with a screwdriver from her tool kit, Belle forced the hasps which fixed the padlock to the cabin door, stopping in amazement. Franz’s camp was the polar opposite of Jim’s simple retreat. In the main room sat an expensive Swedish red enamel stove, more beautiful than practical with its stack of baby logs and pine splits. The decorative Nordic heater couldn’t handle larger pieces and would have to be stoked often. A pillowy calico couch and wicker chairs added comfort, Coleman lanterns hung from the ceiling and chests of drawers lined one wall. A curtained pantry and kitchen nook were stocked with the usual imperishable foodstuffs as well as a double-burnered propane cookstove. On the wall beside the curtain hung a magnificent hunting rifle with a precision Zeiss scope that could drill Bambi’s eyes at three hundred yards. The single bedroom contained a mate’s bed with down comforter, another lamp, shelves of books, and in a prominent spot, like an icon, a print of Degas’ ballerinas, double-matted with v-grooves and an ornate Victorian frame. From what Belle knew of local costs, it was pricey. An oddly feminine touch. Then she noticed that the dancer could well be Eva’s double, protected forever from the tumults of maturity.
In a workshop dusty with crushed ore and tools, Belle lifted another quartzite sample and traced the thick vein with her fingertips. A propane torch lay on a wooden workbench beside picks and chippers. Following a gleam on the floor, Belle knelt to gather a bit of molten metal that had worked into a knothole, small sister to Jim’s drop. A birchbark basket on a high shelf contained a chamois bag of the fabled buttons. Even at two or three ounces each, a slim reward for such painstaking work. Franz had been a busy and patient man to finance his sister’s hospital stay with this laborious process. How far was Bonanza from the cabin? The topo read two to three miles, yet where else would this heavy ore have come from in a place where snowmobiles or small quads were the only transportation? And how many well-timed and cautious trips had been made to run his cottage industry? She filled her hands with the buttons, warm, sensual, atavistic delights. Gadz, she was turning into Zasu Pitts, she laughed nervously. Soon she would be rolling in them
